Post #14268

Cyanide Fishing: The Most Inhumane Way of Fishing Cyanide fishing is the nastiest, most disgusting, most environmentally damaging fishery I have ever heard of. Things are so bad with him that I won’t even try to embellish the situation with humor. Here it would be good to refrain from insults. Its essence is very simple: a diver, usually young and poor, dives to a coastal coral reef and sprays a concentrated solution of sodium cyanide over it. After which he can only wait until the sea current carries the paralyzed fish out of their hiding places. He then packs hundreds of paralyzed animals into bags and nets and drags them onto the deck, where he sorts them according to suitability. Useless commercial fish are thrown overboard, but exotic aquarium specimens are left behind to be sold at a profit later. However, most of them will not end up on the counter: the mortality rate among fish caught with cyanide reaches 75%. And those that survive will live several years less than their healthy counterparts - cyanide poisoning does not go away without consequences. But the fishermen don’t care about this, because they collect fish in the thousands. They also don't care that they are wreaking death and destruction on coral reefs, the most beautiful and biologically diverse communities in the ocean. After all, after spraying, cyanide does not go anywhere. It spreads like an invisible suffocating cloud, killing in its path myriads of invertebrate creatures and even the corals themselves, the basis of reefs and all their diversity. And it doesn’t end there: the bodies become a source of secondary poisoning for those who decide to eat them. And if these were isolated cases, it would not be scary at all. But in 1996, the World Resources Institute conducted an investigation and found that approximately 20% of aquarium fish sold in the Philippines were caught with cyanide. And further research showed that this practice is widespread along the entire coast of South Asia, with the exception of Japan and Korea. Even though it is illegal all over the planet. Do you know what is the most bitter thing? People involved in this fishery earn mere pittance: only slightly more than ordinary fishermen who do everything according to the rules. But even for such a small difference in income, there are desperate heads who are ready to destroy thousand-year-old ecosystems and poison themselves. And despite everything, the illegal and disgusting business is thriving. Okay, so we wrote an article about a rather unpleasant thing. What benefit can the reader get beyond simply being informed about it? 1. If you buy aquarium fish, make sure that the fish was caught and raised in captivity. Now many species are successfully bred in nurseries. Require certification. Ask the seller where the fish is from and how it was caught. Buy only from those who can document this. 2. Spread the word. Most buyers are simply unaware of this problem. 3. If you are plannin